Late Morning - Late Summer : Moriai | Leyfa Askr

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  What is the reason behind humanity's survival? What is the evolutionary advantage that lets them proliferate through countless worlds, reigning as the apex species until monsters with mythril bones appear?

  Is it the mind? Their creativity? Or perhaps their reproduction rate and numbers?

  It's a question I've asked countless times. With all the sentient species in the universe, how is it that every world with substantial sentient life is dominated by humanoids or those with human blood? Did the system specifically select those worlds for me because I was a human, or is that just the direction of the universe's invisible hand?

  After a while, when I started getting sent to long-dead worlds, I stopped asking.

  So why is it that the moment I teleported back to Earth.. that question popped into my head..?

  *Vwoop-BEEP* Getting snapped out of my thoughts by a deafening beep the moment I was released from the gate, my anxious eyes went wide, staring deep into a dark crimson-colored panel.

  In that instant, my eyes darted over it to try and read it: 'Warning: Unauthorized being detected on Server 141-A81-B5. Unable to automatically resolve. Please remain vigilant while-'

  But my eyes weren't fast enough to finish. *Crackle* Before my eyes could reach the end, my surroundings blurred, the voice of the system distorted, and my jaw shattered. *WHAAAMM-* Zipping out of the courtyard, I almost instantly smashed through the trunk of a nearby treant before slamming into the ground with so much force that the earth felt like it was made of water.

  *WOOOSH-SPLASH* Finally reacting as the liquid rock embracing me slowed me down and turned more viscous, my eyes went wide and I lifted my hands to protect my face.

  Looking between my fingers, down the long molten hole, and through the cloud of splinters from the treant, I did everything I could to try and get an eye on who hit me.

  But by the time my eyes could adjust their focus, a fist that appeared to bend the light around it, composed of countless interwoven black strings, appeared in front of my face.

  *Crack-WHAAAM* Feeling a crack rip through my skull with a shock of heat, my unfocused vision sharpened with a burst of adrenaline, only to find the palm of the black, fibrous hand reaching for my face. -FUCK!- *VWOOM*

  Instinctually flooding my body with mana, my hands jumped up to grab the arm, and my leg shot out to kick the assailant.

  However, my foot only connected with vacuous space in my wake, and even though I got my hands on their arm, it felt as if I had grabbed the concept of infinity, an unbreakable object that, even after trying to stop it with all my strength, didn't slow a hair. *Pat*

  Feeling fingers clamp around my neck, my entire body was jerked up, ripped through hundreds of meters of rock and thrown up through the base of another treant, leaving its canopy to collapse to the ground as I was launched into the air.

  But rather than being thrown, I had been dragged.

  Finally giving my eyes a moment to focus, I found the cloudy figure of the horned, human-skinned dragon from Temnota, staring into my eyes with a wide, psycotic smile while gripping my neck with a fibrous black arm.

  He had followed me through the system's gate, just as Eve had.

  But unlike her, he did it on purpose.

  *POP-CRACK* Feeling my neck crumble under his fingers as his grip tightened, I grit my teeth, using every drop of mana and adrenaline I had to break the arm gripping my neck.

  But it never budged.

  "~There is no point in making this harder than it needs to be.~" Smiling from cheek to cheek, his grip steadily grew tighter and tighter. "~Divinity isn't something that can be broken with mortal strength, so why are you resisting so much? Are you really afraid of death?~"

  "As.. if..." Struggling against the impossible force closing on my throat, my mind raced to come up with some sort of way out.

  But.. it truly was as if my strength was meaningless to him. "~So why? Is it your care for this world? Or is it that you still have surviving family?~"

  "You punched me in the face before I could even react you dense bitch-"

  *CRACK* Finally snapping my spinal cord as if it were nothing, I felt all sensation below my neck vanish before taking control of the mana in my body in an attempt to not go limp.

  But such a struggle meant nothing. "~Now, now... There is no reason to be so rude, you know.~" His gaze turned condescending in an instant. "~I'm doing this for your own good.~" *Splat* Digging his fingers into my neck, all emotion started draining from him. "~Don't you feel weak? Unable to even resist as a being weaker than you takes your life..? Even in my prime, I wouldn't have been able to trade blows with you, yet here I am, holding your life in my hands, and you can't even resist.~"

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  Watching as my blood flowed down his arm, I used the mana in my body to push air out of my lungs in an attempt to speak. "You.. aren't weaker than me.. if you can do this..."

  His eyes instantly lit ablaze again as his ethereal tail flicked with joy. "~But I am! You have a vast ocean of divinity in you.. many many times of what I have... But it's just like your mana.~" Gently tapping my stomach with a clawed finger, he looked me in the eyes. "~You don't know how to use it.~"

  Feeling my skin suddenly crawl, I reinforced my stomach with as much mana as I could muster.

  But it may as well have been trying to stop a bullet with tin foil.

  *CRRRUNCH-WOOOSH* "KAH-" Spitting up blood as my armor caved in, and my lungs and stomach ruptured, I zipped across the sky as a streak of light, moving so fast that the ground seemed to grow farther away with every instant.

  However, he didn't stop after one blow.

  Every time his blurry figure vanished from sight, it would reappear before me, only to land a blow somewhere else on my body with a force that could only be rivalled by meteor impacts.

  With every movement, the air around him ignited, and with every blow, my bones were shattered, my armor was reduced to tatters, and my mind was completely blanketed in fog so thick I could barely call myself conscious.

  At that point, my subconscious was only active enough to try and keep me alive, moving mana around my body to absorb some of the impact while using my aura to try spread it out.

  But it was just a matter of time.

  After countless hits, the time for his final blow, aimed at my head, came. He was going to kill me.

  As I watched him pull his fist back with my little-remaining energy, space seemed to warp and time seemed to slow.

  For the first time, I'd be able to see his attack coming.. even if I couldn't move my body to react to it.

  However, just before that fist could reach me, a blinding light appeared behind him, and before the nerves in my eyes could alert my brain to it, my senses blurred into static.

  In an instant, my body, which had withstood nearly everything I could throw at it.. was reduced to nothing.

  Just like a frog in a well, the moment I climbed enough to see more of the sky, a power beyond my comprehension swooped down and dug its claws into me.

  And without the ability to even fight back...

  I died...

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  Early Afternoon - Late Summer : Northern Siberia | In Leyfa Askr & Russian 'Grey Area'

  (Back a few seconds)

  - ??? ~

  -Hm...- Looking down over a massive, endless expanse of snow from the edge of space, I watched as two creatures fought in the upper atmosphere of a world that couldn't contain either of them with a troubled look. -So.. which is my target...-

  Looking over at my system, I watched as a red dot passed under me, perfectly following the pair of creatures brawling beneath me before trying to open their system panels to see if I could figure out which one was my target.

  But.. neither of them seemed to have a panel. -How annoying...- Being a god given the responsibility of handling serious errors the system could not handle itself, it wasn't uncommon for me to see things I could have never imagined.

  However.. at that moment, I was truly at a loss for words. Beneath me was a young god, who appeared to be a dragon that just ascended, and a human girl who couldn't have been more than a few hundred years old.

  Yet despite that.. her aura was unlike anything I had ever seen, and her body was filled with such a mind-boggling web of divinity that it held its shape despite being in millions of different pieces.

  She was a monster unlike anything I had ever seen within the bounds of the system, a powerhouse that couldn't be rivaled within the bounds of mortality.

  So... -Why is she in a world like this...- Looking out to the horizon, I could feel the presences of thousands of different gods, all fairly weak, with a few above the rest. -Is this one of the Creators' worlds?- With so many gods in one place, that seemed to be the case, but that only made the human girl's presence more puzzling.

  -Well, I guess it's outside my job requirement to understand creators anyway...- Looking back down at the girl and the god, I watched as he pulled back his fist to land another torturous blow before finally raising my hand and watching as countless panels appeared around me. -All I need to do is clean up what the system asks me to, and it'll handle the rest.-

  Giving my bug alert panel one more time, I read the description of 'a being that unfairly intruded another world without system permission', before shrugging and waving my hand down. *fwip*

  Almost instantly, a column of light engulfed the two creatures, continuing all the way down to the planet's surface where the vast expanse of snow and ice was atomized before crystallizing into a lightly-colored mythril.

  *Ding* Almost immediately, a kill-confirmed panel appeared in front of my face.

  But.. it was only one. -What the..?-

  *Beep* The system almost instantly alerted me again, this time saying the bug had been dealt with.. only to look down and see the massive column of mana I used to kill the group beginning to spread out and swirl.

  To say my mind warped with horror was an unbelievable understatement.

  But it was no longer my problem. Following system protocol, I confirmed that the bug had been dealt with and left that world as fast as I could, never wanting to return again.

  Little did I know, the monster I had awoken at that moment was one I would come to be quite familiar with...

  A regular.. of sorts…

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